Parents tend to go along with the prevailing customs of their time and place. The social pressure to conform is enormous, whether or not we experience it as social pressure, exactly. If parents don’t conform in certain ways, we’re considered outliers, weirdos, or worst of all, bad parents.
I'm not just against identity politics; I'm against identity. People spend way too much time in their head trying to find their true selves. It's not their guys. There is no "true" you. The only you is the stuff you actually so every day. Writing about data isn't my true self, it's something I do right now. I think everyone would be healthier if they spent a lot less time in their own heads trying to figure out their gender.
I'm biologically male. I like sports and lifting weights. I also like painting my nails and buying scented candles. I don't fucking care where that puts me on an identity spectrum. I'm the things I do
“I think everyone would be healthier if they spent a lot less time in their own heads trying to figure out their gender.”
I do think it’s really damaging. The labels are damaging. Putting yourself in a box is really damaging. Obsessing over which labeled box is just the right fit for you is damaging. Even if gender were real, it would be one tiny aspect of you, and obsessing about any one thing is damaging.
Yup, this is a thought that I want to write about, but I really lack the philosophical rigor and clarity. Besides genetics (which these people hate), they're just no "true" you. You are what are because you do those things. If I stopped writing on Substack, I'd stop "being" a Substack blogger because i would no longer be "doing" the Substack blogging.
I also agree with your point about social context. We don't know people's inner states. We know what they say, but even that's kind of a "doing" thing. I think this over-self-introspection leads to a lot of nonsensical mental health discourse as well.
Yes, where people "identify" with their mental health diagnoses and make those things rigid identity markers too.
Schizophrenia and bipolar and possibly (arguably) a couple of the personality disorders are very much "conditions" related to someone's wiring that potentially are very disruptive to everyday life. Those typically need treatment so someone can get along OK in life.
I guess I'm trying to think of "Which mental health conditions can you never stop 'being' and have to come to terms with the fact that you'll have to deal with them, all your life?" It's a very short list. Those are the ones that I put up there with a medical condition -- things you simply need to live with and manage but will never get rid of.
At the opposite extreme, something like a simple phobia can be easily overcome. It's not "part of you" (whatever that means--but especially not in the same way that schizophrenia is "part of you" because you can never eradicate it; only manage it).
But in between are all sorts of things that in earlier times, people thought of as disruptive, but not necessarily "part of them" -- like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, or (lately) "gender dysphoria." Oh and of course, "the autism spectrum" which has been expanding until all but the most suave and extroverted people in the world are included in it (no doubt this is the topic of a future post).
And to see people mull over their MH diagnoses, and post them as part of their social media descriptions, and behave as if their diagnoses are a "concrete thing" (in the way a broken bone or schizophrenia is a "concrete thing") instead of a label describing some of the problems they face in their everyday lives, the point of which is to name them so you can address them and make them less of a problem -- well, it's disheartening.
It's using a diagnosis (mainly for insurance reimbursement purposes) and turning it into a permanent "part of you" -- whereas usually the people who see their diagnoses as _not_ "part of them" (people who want to do something about their perceived problems) are the ones with better outcomes.
People used to do this with sexuality too. I remember people endless pondering over whether or now they were truly bi/pan/ace/whatever. It seems like this has been crowded out by gender identity.
It makes me wonder, is the whole period of adolescent identity crisis but-who-am-i angst more of a modern construct because teens these days don't get to "do" as much? It seems to me that kids are much more constrained in that they spend most of their days in school, with teachers are giving out ever more homework, and outside of school parents are hovering and overprotective. If you're not happy with "student" or "child" being the sum of your whole self (in both how you see yourself, and how other people see you), well how much opportunity do you even have now to do things? To go out and try out different thing(s), discover what interests you, and then invest in them the time or passion that allow you to make that an integral part of what you see yourself as?
On the other hand, I get wanting to meet and be with other people who share the same/similar experiences that you do and thinking that finding other people with your label is the way to do it. To your comment further down, I think back to my own long-suffering period of pondering my sexuality, characterized first and foremost by a sense of desperate seeking (oof!), and now I think it was just a normal part of any confused young person's search for acceptance and understanding. Young me just thought it would be easiest to find the particular flavor of understanding I sought by using the label as a filtering mechanism. Spoiler: trying to make friends on the basis of identity alone rarely works. If the relationship lasts it's because you found more concrete things to build a foundation on, like shared interests, hobbies, or way of looking at the world. All things you "do"!
What an interesting comment! I know you were “talking to” Klaus, but I just wanted to say our culture’s angsty teen self-discovery and separation from parents is definitely a weird thing in our culture, and I’ve been interested in researching (haven’t had time yet) what happens in other cultures and how that all fits together.
It’s definitely the case that children in other cultures often have shorter childhoods and there’s good and bad in it. If you’re working to help the family from a young age, you’re more “respected” and “valuable” in a sense, but you also have less time to care about “who you are” even in the sense of what you like to “do.” In a setting where everyone is scratching out survival, no one has time to care about those things.
So in a way, these weird cultural phases among adolescents are probably partly an artifact of not needing to focus on survival and having abundant free time; and living in a culture where you get to choose a role other than (say) subsistence farmer. But there’s more to it than that.
I guess I'm less interested in why teens do it than why adults do it. I know this posts is about children, but I don't know what to do about 14 years old obsessed with internal identities. They're weird. I'm more concerned with the adults who act like this. It seems like kind of a dead end as person.
I think about the 14-year olds mostly because if this stuff doesn't get worked out, it follows them into adulthood and then you end up with adults obsessed with internal identities. Case in point, I had my sexuality crisis at 20, and it lasted until I was 24. I was 27 when I finally realized I didn't need the label, and that perhaps in a better world I wouldn't have ever thought I needed it, either.
All this discussion of gender nonconformity and questions of identity and self-discovery, it makes me think the problem is simply that, generations of philosophers notwithstanding, humanity has really only just started out on the concept of life that has the space to have meaning. And that means there's still a lot of misguided hypotheses, dead ends, and epileptic trees that we'll have to live through on the path forward.
Please let's look at the big picture. 100 years ago people made a big deal out of their national, ethnic and religious identities. Some places still do (think Russia), but the West has gradually moved on.
Somewhere around the 1970's the no-identity free-floating atomic individual without attachments has been invented. (1950's Existentialism was a huge influence). That was back then the modern liberal thing.
Well guess it did not work out. It seems a lot of people need identities both in the sense of "what am I?" and belonging to groups, tribes.
Today, race, gender, queerness and a lot of such things are basically like a new nationalism, providing a self-description and in-group belonging.
It turned out, many people are way more tribal than 1970's liberalism expected.
Feb 3, 2022·edited Feb 3, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
Very interesting follow-up to your last article about the topic. Thank you.
Children just try stuff out all the time. I have sisters and of course I tried on their skirts or hair clippers as a young boy. I even called myself Tilda.
When my sisters got dolls for their birthday I had to have one, too. I got one, was very happy and never played with it. My parents did not make a big deal out of this. They didn't discourage it at all. But they also didn't encourage it. It was just child's play!
I lost interest and now I am a totally boring cis-gendered heterosexual (I am sorry).
I shudder to think what would have happened with me if I grew up in the US today. Just imagine this for a second:
What if my loving new parents now conclude that I am really a girl in a boy's body? If they send me to kindergarten in girls' clothes called Tilda?
After two weeks I decide that I don't want to be Tilda anymore. My parents are concerned about this. They ask me if some other children made fun of me. And indeed there were some boys that made a joke about my pink dress. Immediately my parents inform the kindergarten of these transphobic transgressions. After getting advise from diversity consultants the kindergarten teachers buy "I am Jazz" and "Julián is a Mermaid" to educate these transphobic hobgoblins. Now the next days I really don't want to dress up as Tilda anymore, but when I refuse to wear the girls' clothes my mother breaks in tears: "See what these kids are doing to Tilda", she sobs to my father. Angry and confused he calls the kindergarten. They schedule a diversity training for the teachers. Soon I am lauded for every stereotypically feminine thing I do and everybody tells me how brave I am to live as a girl.
Yeah I could go on but I think everyone got the point.
Now, I am really not a specialist in child psychology. But I do not think you need to be one to see why this is a bad idea.
Yes, I’m so glad you were a child then and not now.
I’ve encountered more people now than I can count — who grew up to be “just” gay or “just” straight — who say “Thank goodness I grew up then and not now. I love my life. I would have been ‘transed’ and my life would have been totally different, and worse.”
You’re right that it seems like common sense and anyone should be able to figure out it’s a bad idea, right? And yet so much influence attaches to seeing everyone around you acting like it’s very good and very modern and enlightened. If you don’t do the modern thing, you’re bad. If you loved your child, you would do this thing.
I do think it really is connected to this weird conformity in all things related to child-rearing. As you observed in your article everybody now is convinced that breast-feeding is the ONLY right way to raise a child.
Mothers on the playground, all raised on 100% formula and in best health, are absolutely convinced you just HAVE to breastfeed ALL of the time, otherwise your beloved baby will grow up to be immunocompromised and sickly. No matter the mastitis. No matter the sleepless hours spent on the electric breast pump. No matter your baby turning yellow from neonatal jaundice because it cannot get enough nutrients from you.
And its not just a simple trend, there is this peer pressure around it. The pityful look or the raised eyebrow if you raise your kid on formula. It's only one right way. And everyone has to be on board.
I make a point of mansplaining to every friend who gives birth, that she does not HAVE to breastfeed if it doesn't work. Not sure if that's my place but it just makes me so angry to see this unnecessary pressure put on young women.
Yes— when I first had my kids I thoroughly believed “breast is best” and you couldn’t have tempted me with a wheelbarrow full of gold coins to feed my precious child any formula! And most of the moms I met believed the same. We thought it was selfish or unhealthy not to breastfeed blah blah.
But one nice thing about getting older is getting less rigid in thought (hopefully)—you see the way you once did things and the choices you made were not The One True Way, and there are many reasons someone might want or need to formula-feed.
Part of my ignorance was due to the fact that breastfeeding was easy for me and my kids: there was plenty of milk, my kids were healthy, I was able to arrange my life so I was home with them (unlike most American women). When I heard that breastfeeding was difficult or impossible for some women, in my ignorance I thought, “They must be doing it wrong.” (Cringe!)
Well, hopefully I’m wiser now and recognize there is no One True Way to do anything. And to the extent my “easy breastfeeding” or my ignorance ever made another woman feel bad, I’m truly sorry.
One of my favorite sayings (a 9th century Zen koan) is, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
This was another outstanding and well-argued piece. Your point about the kinds of decisions we do and don’t allow six-year-olds to make was especially convincing. When I was six, I wanted to go off and live outside in nature like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was convinced that I was really a prairie girl. Needless to say, while I was allowed (and encouraged!) to play outside as much as I wanted, I was required to sleep in my own bed—and I was in fact happy and grateful that my parents had drawn the line. I think it can be terrifying for kids when there are no limits—when everyone around them immediately caters to their whims.
My other problem with transitioning young kids is that with any other medical condition, doctors take the most conservative approach—first, do no harm. So if kids have a cold, they no longer automatically get antibiotics. If they struggle in school, it is typical to give them therapies and tutoring before jumping straight to Adderall (even though there is a mountain of evidence for the effectiveness of Adderall for kids with ADHD). If a woman has a lump in her breast, doctors start with a biopsy, and then proceed, if necessary, to a lumpectomy and radiation. They don’t immediately give any woman who walks in their door a double mastectomy, “just in case.” Putting a tomboy or a boy who likes long hair and flowing clothes on a path to transition seems to me more like a prophylactic Halsted mastectomy than like the watchful waiting doctors do in any other case. By all means, let kids dress how they like! But that choice need not imply anything else.
Yes, it’s is so much like advancing to the most extreme treatment before trying anything else— and that seems so out of place considering how we treat everything else.
And I love your example of believing you were really a prairie girl! That’s quite perfect (and delightful). Yes, what if your parents had said, “Sure, go live outside, Mari, and Godspeed,” and then your teachers and friends and random people you met all agreed?
While no parent would let their child live as a “prairie girl,” many will let their kids live as the opposite sex— and they don’t seem to understand these are equivalent ideas, because society applauds one and not the other.
So many excellent and thought provoking comments here.
The point I would like to add is that this is affecting ALL children who are exposed to these ideas in classrooms. It is not only the few who may have some kind of "gender identity" issue. Every child has been forced to listen to "I am Jazz". Many children cannot even read at grade level, but the education establishment chooses to waste class time on this nonsense.
Is it because they are trying to cover for the fact that in many cases they have failed at their core mission?
How does a society allow this kind of child abuse to be sanctioned in its schools? And parents are told that they have no right to object. If they do, they are labelled as "domestic terrorists".
I really think (based on my limited knowledge; ie, from friends who are schoolteachers) that it comes from the top.
The school district dictates what the “hot new topic” is, and for the last several years it’s been race and gender. They dictate what trainings are required. They tell teachers what new things to add to the curriculum — like teaching very young kids to “explore their gender”— even when that’s not developmentally appropriate. If a kindergarten teacher is told to include something about gender, that’s what he’ll do because everyone else is doing it too.
I think the school districts often need to point to ways they’re “improving”— and what easier way than to require the fashionable training, and the fashionable addition to the curriculum? It’s easy and most people consider it “progress.”
As silly as it is, I think at the base of it, people are well-intentioned and they ***really can’t see how harmful this is.***
But then you have a slippery slope of the teacher who asks the parents in their conference if they’ve considered that their gender nonconforming kid might be trans. Or teachers who encourage kids to hide things from “nonsupportive” parents. Or teachers who change name and gender of students, etc.
It’s a huge mind-game to send kids down this road, but I’m convinced the adults who do it don’t see the harm.
And in fact many well-meaning people see therapy to decrease emotional distress as “conversion therapy” and then they mix it up with the horrible (real) conversion therapy some have tried to do with gay and lesbian kids.
The difference is: every society, every time and place, has had its gay and lesbian people, and they can’t change sexual orientation even if they want to.
But not every society, not every time and place, had permanent medicalization and cosmetic surgeries that damaged kids’ fertility and sexual response and called that “being who they are.” This was never considered a necessity before.
Be who you are, certainly, without denying your body is real and exists and is perfectly fine as it is.
Feb 4, 2022·edited Feb 4, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
Yes, I agree that it comes from the top - what I label the education establishment, and probably even further up the political chain.
And yes, it does seem to be an effort to remake reality to conform to some preferred ideology, as crazy as that sounds. Trying to teach children (all children) to deny reality is incredibly damaging.
State sanctioned child abuse. Claiming good intentions does not make it acceptable.
I agree with you. I do think it’s harder to put a stop to, when people seem to truly believe they’re on the side of the angels and helping children. They will go to great lengths, I believe, to avoid consciously realizing that they’ve harmed children, because that would devastate them. Much easier emotionally for them to double down and continue to “believe”—which makes our job (to end it) much more difficult.
How would you like to be a parent, for example, who realized you’d played a role in destroying your child’s brain and bone development, fertility, sexual function, mental health, and ability to date, form intimate bonds with another person, and someday create their own family?
You would go to great, great lengths not to let that realization seep into your consciousness.
It’s definitely coming from the folks who train teachers in universities, too. My sense is that recent cohorts of graduate students have nudged the teacher education curriculum further in this direction. I teach in an area that you’d expect to be doctrinaire on this stuff, and plenty of my colleagues throughout the humanities are indeed dogmatic where gender identity is concerned. But the school of education people take the cake.
What about the parents who refuse to believe their kids are a different gender and ignore it all -- but schools and friends treat the child as if they are different sex? There is so much cognitive dissonance, not only for the parents, but for the child.
Yes, I think it’s really harmful for the kid. Their beliefs about their gender are being validated by media, by their friends, by their teachers, by the curriculum— and there are their dumb old mean ignorant parents, refusing to get with the program.
It’s a problem. The extent to which society undermines parents in this way is really terrible.
I’ve never heard of a school, say, where they have a conversation with the parent and then come to an understanding that “we should respect what the parent’s judgment call is here.” No it’s always in opposition to the bad unenlightened parent, and feeling sorry for the kid, and then doubling down.
Thanks for this article. Many parents are not following this current trend of encouraging the wish of transition of their kids. But they feel alone. New groups of parents emerge everywhere in the world (GENSPECT, AManda Familias, AMQG, Bayswater support group, Ypomoni, Genid Sweden, PDEQ-Quebec, ... ) But who knows about us ? Which journalist speaks about that in the mainstream medias ?
I think this experience is made infinitely harder for parents when society either ignores them or paints them as bad parents or bigots.
It’s also much harder for families because, no matter what parents say to their kids about “being trans,” all of society is providing opposite messages. If their children had a different condition, such as an eating disorder, their schools and coaches and peers wouldn’t be telling them how great that is, and we all need to celebrate it, and your parents are wrong and possibly even bad people.
Parents have been threatened with losing custody of their kids because they didn’t agree to transition.
Abigail Shrier is the only journalist I can think of who’s regularly written about this. I first saw her writing in the Wall Street Journal of all places, about the phenomenon of teen girls deciding they are “really” the opposite sex. In her book she talks about the parents she’s met, and how they all love their kids and how none of them she met are bigots. But it’s very hard to oppose a cultural narrative.
Thanks for this answer. Precisely, I often compare gender dysphoria with eating disorder . In one case, school and doctors are with you. In the other case, you become paranoiac, you never know who is willing to help.
Yes. This is the presentation of the case which, if it were read by everyone tonight, would end the practice of social transition tomorrow. Your reason and clarity have triumphed again! Thank you.
When I was ten or eleven my friends and I rode our bikes a few miles to a small airport. We gave a pilot (a stranger) a couple of bucks for gas and he gave us a ride in his Piper Cub over our homes. Returning home we told our parents who had no idea of our plans and they thought nothing about it. Early fifties. Imagine that happening today.
1) That is an incredibly cool story and I’ll bet an amazing memory. 2) if I imagine it happening today, I expect a call to the police would be involved, except the kids would never be out of sight that long in the first place, to execute such a maneuver, and if the kids saw a stranger, they would be certain the guy was going to kill and kidnap them (not necessarily in that order) and would in no way request a ride anywhere. They would have heard the admonition against “being taken to a second location”— it’s certain death!!!
I love it. And I am sad for today’s kids. And if my own kids did that, even I —despite being on the “let them have autonomy and fun” end of the parenting spectrum —would have a flippin’ heart attack.
I know everyone is probably bored with my memories of childhood independence from the fifties but one more has surfaced that I wanted to share with you. While visiting downtown Chicago (sans parents) we would stand outside one of the two burlesque houses on State street south of Van Buren and sneak peeks of the show when the door opened briefly. Taking pity on these preteen young men the guy at the door once let us in to watch the whole show. This we never mentioned to our folks.
I am not bored at all of your reminiscences: it sounds like you and your friends were very enterprising, and this trait has probably stood you in good stead!
Your wonderful story is reminding me of a story from a friend of mine that is almost the opposite of yours but is very funny. My friend had an extremely overprotective mother, who allowed him to ride his bike only in their little cul-de-sac until he was 12 years old (!).
On the day my friend turned 12, he called up his best friend, and they set out on an EPIC bike ride that took them halfway across Massachusetts. When they turned around to go back, they realized that they were exhausted and couldn’t move. The whole way out they had been riding downhill and with the wind, and they had no energy left for the return trip. They had to call my friend’s mom to drive across the state to pick them up. I always thought it kind of served her right for being so ridiculously overprotective.
I waited until I was an adult to ride my bike across my state (Illinois) but again as pre teens my friends and I would ride the commuter train twenty miles to downtown Chicago (unaccompanied by adults) and spend the day roaming the Loop (Marshall Fields and Carsons), maybe a movie, Grant Park and the lakefront. When we got home my mom’s reaction was “That’s nice. Get ready for dinner.”
Another superb analysis, Salonniere. I would urge anyone who's not listened to the episode of Gender: A Wider Lens podcast on this topic to check it out. Truly, social transition is a powerful intervention that sets children on a collision course with their own bodies.
I especially appreciate your discussion of how a major health website dismisses Kohlberg with no evidence and no argumentation whatsoever! It is so typical of the (un)reasoning we see again and again in major institutions and powerful media. Fudge things that were considered reasonably settled by the natural and social sciences until it's just a big blob of melted goo, and imagine that this blobbiness will somehow benefit trans people.
But the most visible result is that kids are transitioning at exponentially-increasing rates (socially and medically), while the actual problems that beset transitioned people (in housing, employment, and above all mental health) remain largely unaddressed. The loudest voices are in fact relatively privileged and focused on their own validation. They prefer celebrating sex work (for instance) over creating other employment opportunities for low-skilled, poor trans women. In this quest for validation, the losers are not "the cis"; they're the most vulnerable transitioned adults - and legions of children and youth.
Feb 7, 2022·edited Feb 7, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
I'm not going to post this as yet another comment in the endlessly-nested comments under Klaus' remarks about identity, but it's inspired by his response. One great irony in the presently dominant understanding of gender is that sociologists and other feminist scholars have regarded gender as something one "does" rather than something one "is" since the late 1980s. Among these scholars? Judith Butler. That's pretty much the whole premise of Gender Trouble. Butler argues strenuously against the idea that there's some internal essence in ourselves that constitutes gender. Rather, gender is discursively created all the way down.
I disagree with the latter point when it comes to sex. Yes, the way we think about sex is shaped profoundly by societal norms and ideas. But reproductive sex would still be a binary thing (just two gametes) regardless of how we conceptualize everything related to it.
Butler does quite a nimble dance around the notion of an internal gender identity, these days. I have yet to see Butler endorse this idea openly - and indeed the New Statesman interview from a year ago revealed that Butler has declared a nonbinary legal identity in the state of CA but still doesn't think pronouns are anyone's personal property, tho Butler enjoys being referred to as they/them.
Identity politics originally referred to politics that take into account one's location in broader systems of power. It didn't refer to a deeply-felt sense of oneself. It's been warped into an exercise in navel-gazing, and the resultant rumination is proving unhealthy for many of our young people.
Yes one of the most annoying things is the conflation of sex and gender.
Sex is real and exists in the physical world and matters for women’s reality.
Gender is a bunch of ideas. Anyone who wants to hold ideas about gender is welcome to do it, and there’s a lot that could be discussed, but it doesn’t change the fact that sex exists in the material world.
As some feminists say (and I agree)—everyone knows who’s female when it comes time to choose which fetuses to abort; which infants to leave out in the field to die of exposure; which children to genitally mutilate to ensure their chastity; which children to sell into slavery, if you have to choose one to sell; which children not to educate, if there’s not enough money to educate all; and which children to marry off for their reproductive capacity in exchange for some goats.
Everyone knows what sex is. It matters what sex is. In many cultures, women are still treated like property or livestock. Everyone knows which people are treated like property or livestock, and which are not. This is never in doubt. They have no trouble telling who’s who.
It’s only in our culture, where women have a lot of freedom and opportunity and are treated relatively well (not _as_ well, not with _as_ much respect, but still: relatively well) that we invent all this nonsense about people changing sex. It’s so aggravatingly narrow-minded and foolish— not to mention blind to the reality of societies that aren’t as wealthy as ours.
Feb 6, 2022·edited Feb 6, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
I've posted other comments on this article, and I find myself still mulling it over a few days later. I think that's a good thing - an article that keeps you thinking.
I agree quite strongly that parents following the "social transition" mode for their children is a terrible idea. But I can't accept "societal pressure" as an understandable explanation.
We hear a lot now about how "finally, the adults are in the room" and back in control. Well then, act like it! Growing up, we all heard some version of "if everybody else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?" from our parents, to show the limits of peer pressure. Now it seems we have parents willing to jump off that bridge, while the others line the road and cheer them on.
Grow up! If parents can't stand up to peer pressure in order to protect their own children, is there any line they wouldn't cross if the peer pressure were sufficient? It's a chilling thought. How much damage will they tolerate in order to stay in the good graces of the woke zealots?
I do think it’s that people are on autopilot. If everyone “on their team” is doing something, they will too. If everyone is doing something, they assume it’s good. Very few people are analytical.
A coherent, well written take on what is happening to our society as a result of pro trans activists starting to get a hold on our institutions such as schools and the medical profession. It is a wake up call to parents and others who care about that our youth is being indoctrinated by a fanatical group who will stop at nothing to shove their agenda down our throats. This spiteful, vicious group has attacked well loved people like JK Rowling, who has a commitment to truth first of all and calls them out for what they truly are and believe. They are holding up a bill against female genital mutilation for their own petty reasons, a bill that would benefit millions of women worldwide, all because of bickering over the usage of the words female and genital, which they feel excludes trans women. What could be more ridiculous, trans women don't have to fear FGM because they have no female genitals to mutilate! These same fanatical trans activists have attacked women's marches around the world because they hate feminists. Mermaids, a trans advocacy organization, had a high corporate officer who is a sex offender. They also push their agenda on vulnerable children, giving them breast binders behind their parent's backs. The list goes on... For how long will society go on before it gets sick of these fanatics foisting their disgusting so called values on us? Time to just say no to pronouns, calling men in dresses 'girls', misogynist trans activists, biological men in women's sports/bathrooms/lockerrooms and their whole, sick agenda!
A coherent, well written take on what is happening to our society as a result of pro trans activists starting to get a hold on our institutions such as schools and the medical profession. It is a wake up call to parents and others who care about that our youth is being indoctrinated by a fanatical group who will stop at nothing to shove their agenda down our throats. This spiteful, vicious group has attacked well loved people like JK Rowling, who has a commitment to truth first of all and calls them out for what they truly are and believe. They are holding up a bill against female genital mutilation for their own petty reasons, a bill that would benefit millions of women worldwide, all because of bickering over the usage of the words female and genital, which they feel excludes trans women. What could be more ridiculous, trans women don't have to fear FGM because they have no female genitals to mutilate! These same fanatical trans activists have attacked women's marches around the world because they hate feminists. Mermaids, a trans advocacy organization, had a high corporate officer who is a sex offender. They also push their agenda on vulnerable children, giving them breast binders behind their parent's backs. The list goes on... For how long will society go on before it gets sick of these fanatics foisting their disgusting so called values on us? Time to just say no to pronouns, calling men in dresses 'girls', misogynist trans activists, biological men in women's sports/bathrooms/lockerrooms and their whole, sick agenda!
A coherent, well written take on what is happening to our society as a result of pro trans activists starting to get a hold on our institutions such as schools and the medical profession. It is a wake up call to parents and others who care about that our youth is being indoctrinated by a fanatical group who will stop at nothing to shove their agenda down our throats. This spiteful, vicious group has attacked well loved people like JK Rowling, who has a commitment to truth first of all and calls them out for what they truly are and believe. They are holding up a bill against female genital mutilation for their own petty reasons, a bill that would benefit millions of women worldwide, all because of bickering over the usage of the words female and genital, which they feel excludes trans women. What could be more ridiculous, trans women don't have to fear FGM because they have no female genitals to mutilate! These same fanatical trans activists have attacked women's marches around the world because they hate feminists. Mermaids, a trans advocacy organization, had a high corporate officer who is a sex offender. They also push their agenda on vulnerable children, giving them breast binders behind their parent's backs. The list goes on... For how long will society go on before it gets sick of these fanatics foisting their disgusting so called values on us? Time to just say no to pronouns, calling men in dresses 'girls', misogynist trans activists, biological men in women's sports/bathrooms/lockerrooms and their whole, sick agenda!
I'm not just against identity politics; I'm against identity. People spend way too much time in their head trying to find their true selves. It's not their guys. There is no "true" you. The only you is the stuff you actually so every day. Writing about data isn't my true self, it's something I do right now. I think everyone would be healthier if they spent a lot less time in their own heads trying to figure out their gender.
I'm biologically male. I like sports and lifting weights. I also like painting my nails and buying scented candles. I don't fucking care where that puts me on an identity spectrum. I'm the things I do
“I think everyone would be healthier if they spent a lot less time in their own heads trying to figure out their gender.”
I do think it’s really damaging. The labels are damaging. Putting yourself in a box is really damaging. Obsessing over which labeled box is just the right fit for you is damaging. Even if gender were real, it would be one tiny aspect of you, and obsessing about any one thing is damaging.
I like how you sum it up: “I’m the things I do.”
Really corny, but I once read "We're human doings, not human beings"
True, though!
And if you consider we all live in a social context, very few people care who we “are” because they only know us via what we “do.”
Yup, this is a thought that I want to write about, but I really lack the philosophical rigor and clarity. Besides genetics (which these people hate), they're just no "true" you. You are what are because you do those things. If I stopped writing on Substack, I'd stop "being" a Substack blogger because i would no longer be "doing" the Substack blogging.
I also agree with your point about social context. We don't know people's inner states. We know what they say, but even that's kind of a "doing" thing. I think this over-self-introspection leads to a lot of nonsensical mental health discourse as well.
Yes, where people "identify" with their mental health diagnoses and make those things rigid identity markers too.
Schizophrenia and bipolar and possibly (arguably) a couple of the personality disorders are very much "conditions" related to someone's wiring that potentially are very disruptive to everyday life. Those typically need treatment so someone can get along OK in life.
I guess I'm trying to think of "Which mental health conditions can you never stop 'being' and have to come to terms with the fact that you'll have to deal with them, all your life?" It's a very short list. Those are the ones that I put up there with a medical condition -- things you simply need to live with and manage but will never get rid of.
At the opposite extreme, something like a simple phobia can be easily overcome. It's not "part of you" (whatever that means--but especially not in the same way that schizophrenia is "part of you" because you can never eradicate it; only manage it).
But in between are all sorts of things that in earlier times, people thought of as disruptive, but not necessarily "part of them" -- like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, or (lately) "gender dysphoria." Oh and of course, "the autism spectrum" which has been expanding until all but the most suave and extroverted people in the world are included in it (no doubt this is the topic of a future post).
And to see people mull over their MH diagnoses, and post them as part of their social media descriptions, and behave as if their diagnoses are a "concrete thing" (in the way a broken bone or schizophrenia is a "concrete thing") instead of a label describing some of the problems they face in their everyday lives, the point of which is to name them so you can address them and make them less of a problem -- well, it's disheartening.
It's using a diagnosis (mainly for insurance reimbursement purposes) and turning it into a permanent "part of you" -- whereas usually the people who see their diagnoses as _not_ "part of them" (people who want to do something about their perceived problems) are the ones with better outcomes.
People used to do this with sexuality too. I remember people endless pondering over whether or now they were truly bi/pan/ace/whatever. It seems like this has been crowded out by gender identity.
It makes me wonder, is the whole period of adolescent identity crisis but-who-am-i angst more of a modern construct because teens these days don't get to "do" as much? It seems to me that kids are much more constrained in that they spend most of their days in school, with teachers are giving out ever more homework, and outside of school parents are hovering and overprotective. If you're not happy with "student" or "child" being the sum of your whole self (in both how you see yourself, and how other people see you), well how much opportunity do you even have now to do things? To go out and try out different thing(s), discover what interests you, and then invest in them the time or passion that allow you to make that an integral part of what you see yourself as?
On the other hand, I get wanting to meet and be with other people who share the same/similar experiences that you do and thinking that finding other people with your label is the way to do it. To your comment further down, I think back to my own long-suffering period of pondering my sexuality, characterized first and foremost by a sense of desperate seeking (oof!), and now I think it was just a normal part of any confused young person's search for acceptance and understanding. Young me just thought it would be easiest to find the particular flavor of understanding I sought by using the label as a filtering mechanism. Spoiler: trying to make friends on the basis of identity alone rarely works. If the relationship lasts it's because you found more concrete things to build a foundation on, like shared interests, hobbies, or way of looking at the world. All things you "do"!
What an interesting comment! I know you were “talking to” Klaus, but I just wanted to say our culture’s angsty teen self-discovery and separation from parents is definitely a weird thing in our culture, and I’ve been interested in researching (haven’t had time yet) what happens in other cultures and how that all fits together.
It’s definitely the case that children in other cultures often have shorter childhoods and there’s good and bad in it. If you’re working to help the family from a young age, you’re more “respected” and “valuable” in a sense, but you also have less time to care about “who you are” even in the sense of what you like to “do.” In a setting where everyone is scratching out survival, no one has time to care about those things.
So in a way, these weird cultural phases among adolescents are probably partly an artifact of not needing to focus on survival and having abundant free time; and living in a culture where you get to choose a role other than (say) subsistence farmer. But there’s more to it than that.
So much to think about.
I guess I'm less interested in why teens do it than why adults do it. I know this posts is about children, but I don't know what to do about 14 years old obsessed with internal identities. They're weird. I'm more concerned with the adults who act like this. It seems like kind of a dead end as person.
I think about the 14-year olds mostly because if this stuff doesn't get worked out, it follows them into adulthood and then you end up with adults obsessed with internal identities. Case in point, I had my sexuality crisis at 20, and it lasted until I was 24. I was 27 when I finally realized I didn't need the label, and that perhaps in a better world I wouldn't have ever thought I needed it, either.
All this discussion of gender nonconformity and questions of identity and self-discovery, it makes me think the problem is simply that, generations of philosophers notwithstanding, humanity has really only just started out on the concept of life that has the space to have meaning. And that means there's still a lot of misguided hypotheses, dead ends, and epileptic trees that we'll have to live through on the path forward.
So true. And getting outside of yourself has an added benefit - the discovery that there is a big, interesting world out there!
Please let's look at the big picture. 100 years ago people made a big deal out of their national, ethnic and religious identities. Some places still do (think Russia), but the West has gradually moved on.
Somewhere around the 1970's the no-identity free-floating atomic individual without attachments has been invented. (1950's Existentialism was a huge influence). That was back then the modern liberal thing.
Well guess it did not work out. It seems a lot of people need identities both in the sense of "what am I?" and belonging to groups, tribes.
Today, race, gender, queerness and a lot of such things are basically like a new nationalism, providing a self-description and in-group belonging.
It turned out, many people are way more tribal than 1970's liberalism expected.
Very interesting follow-up to your last article about the topic. Thank you.
Children just try stuff out all the time. I have sisters and of course I tried on their skirts or hair clippers as a young boy. I even called myself Tilda.
When my sisters got dolls for their birthday I had to have one, too. I got one, was very happy and never played with it. My parents did not make a big deal out of this. They didn't discourage it at all. But they also didn't encourage it. It was just child's play!
I lost interest and now I am a totally boring cis-gendered heterosexual (I am sorry).
I shudder to think what would have happened with me if I grew up in the US today. Just imagine this for a second:
What if my loving new parents now conclude that I am really a girl in a boy's body? If they send me to kindergarten in girls' clothes called Tilda?
After two weeks I decide that I don't want to be Tilda anymore. My parents are concerned about this. They ask me if some other children made fun of me. And indeed there were some boys that made a joke about my pink dress. Immediately my parents inform the kindergarten of these transphobic transgressions. After getting advise from diversity consultants the kindergarten teachers buy "I am Jazz" and "Julián is a Mermaid" to educate these transphobic hobgoblins. Now the next days I really don't want to dress up as Tilda anymore, but when I refuse to wear the girls' clothes my mother breaks in tears: "See what these kids are doing to Tilda", she sobs to my father. Angry and confused he calls the kindergarten. They schedule a diversity training for the teachers. Soon I am lauded for every stereotypically feminine thing I do and everybody tells me how brave I am to live as a girl.
Yeah I could go on but I think everyone got the point.
Now, I am really not a specialist in child psychology. But I do not think you need to be one to see why this is a bad idea.
“Transphobic hobgoblins”!!! Love it!
Yes, I’m so glad you were a child then and not now.
I’ve encountered more people now than I can count — who grew up to be “just” gay or “just” straight — who say “Thank goodness I grew up then and not now. I love my life. I would have been ‘transed’ and my life would have been totally different, and worse.”
You’re right that it seems like common sense and anyone should be able to figure out it’s a bad idea, right? And yet so much influence attaches to seeing everyone around you acting like it’s very good and very modern and enlightened. If you don’t do the modern thing, you’re bad. If you loved your child, you would do this thing.
I do think it really is connected to this weird conformity in all things related to child-rearing. As you observed in your article everybody now is convinced that breast-feeding is the ONLY right way to raise a child.
Mothers on the playground, all raised on 100% formula and in best health, are absolutely convinced you just HAVE to breastfeed ALL of the time, otherwise your beloved baby will grow up to be immunocompromised and sickly. No matter the mastitis. No matter the sleepless hours spent on the electric breast pump. No matter your baby turning yellow from neonatal jaundice because it cannot get enough nutrients from you.
And its not just a simple trend, there is this peer pressure around it. The pityful look or the raised eyebrow if you raise your kid on formula. It's only one right way. And everyone has to be on board.
I make a point of mansplaining to every friend who gives birth, that she does not HAVE to breastfeed if it doesn't work. Not sure if that's my place but it just makes me so angry to see this unnecessary pressure put on young women.
sorry if that was a bit off-topic.
Nothing is off topic here!
Yes— when I first had my kids I thoroughly believed “breast is best” and you couldn’t have tempted me with a wheelbarrow full of gold coins to feed my precious child any formula! And most of the moms I met believed the same. We thought it was selfish or unhealthy not to breastfeed blah blah.
But one nice thing about getting older is getting less rigid in thought (hopefully)—you see the way you once did things and the choices you made were not The One True Way, and there are many reasons someone might want or need to formula-feed.
Part of my ignorance was due to the fact that breastfeeding was easy for me and my kids: there was plenty of milk, my kids were healthy, I was able to arrange my life so I was home with them (unlike most American women). When I heard that breastfeeding was difficult or impossible for some women, in my ignorance I thought, “They must be doing it wrong.” (Cringe!)
Well, hopefully I’m wiser now and recognize there is no One True Way to do anything. And to the extent my “easy breastfeeding” or my ignorance ever made another woman feel bad, I’m truly sorry.
One of my favorite sayings (a 9th century Zen koan) is, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
It pretty much always applies.
This was another outstanding and well-argued piece. Your point about the kinds of decisions we do and don’t allow six-year-olds to make was especially convincing. When I was six, I wanted to go off and live outside in nature like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was convinced that I was really a prairie girl. Needless to say, while I was allowed (and encouraged!) to play outside as much as I wanted, I was required to sleep in my own bed—and I was in fact happy and grateful that my parents had drawn the line. I think it can be terrifying for kids when there are no limits—when everyone around them immediately caters to their whims.
My other problem with transitioning young kids is that with any other medical condition, doctors take the most conservative approach—first, do no harm. So if kids have a cold, they no longer automatically get antibiotics. If they struggle in school, it is typical to give them therapies and tutoring before jumping straight to Adderall (even though there is a mountain of evidence for the effectiveness of Adderall for kids with ADHD). If a woman has a lump in her breast, doctors start with a biopsy, and then proceed, if necessary, to a lumpectomy and radiation. They don’t immediately give any woman who walks in their door a double mastectomy, “just in case.” Putting a tomboy or a boy who likes long hair and flowing clothes on a path to transition seems to me more like a prophylactic Halsted mastectomy than like the watchful waiting doctors do in any other case. By all means, let kids dress how they like! But that choice need not imply anything else.
You’ve made some amazing points, Mari— thanks!!!
Yes, it’s is so much like advancing to the most extreme treatment before trying anything else— and that seems so out of place considering how we treat everything else.
And I love your example of believing you were really a prairie girl! That’s quite perfect (and delightful). Yes, what if your parents had said, “Sure, go live outside, Mari, and Godspeed,” and then your teachers and friends and random people you met all agreed?
While no parent would let their child live as a “prairie girl,” many will let their kids live as the opposite sex— and they don’t seem to understand these are equivalent ideas, because society applauds one and not the other.
So many excellent and thought provoking comments here.
The point I would like to add is that this is affecting ALL children who are exposed to these ideas in classrooms. It is not only the few who may have some kind of "gender identity" issue. Every child has been forced to listen to "I am Jazz". Many children cannot even read at grade level, but the education establishment chooses to waste class time on this nonsense.
Is it because they are trying to cover for the fact that in many cases they have failed at their core mission?
How does a society allow this kind of child abuse to be sanctioned in its schools? And parents are told that they have no right to object. If they do, they are labelled as "domestic terrorists".
I really think (based on my limited knowledge; ie, from friends who are schoolteachers) that it comes from the top.
The school district dictates what the “hot new topic” is, and for the last several years it’s been race and gender. They dictate what trainings are required. They tell teachers what new things to add to the curriculum — like teaching very young kids to “explore their gender”— even when that’s not developmentally appropriate. If a kindergarten teacher is told to include something about gender, that’s what he’ll do because everyone else is doing it too.
I think the school districts often need to point to ways they’re “improving”— and what easier way than to require the fashionable training, and the fashionable addition to the curriculum? It’s easy and most people consider it “progress.”
As silly as it is, I think at the base of it, people are well-intentioned and they ***really can’t see how harmful this is.***
But then you have a slippery slope of the teacher who asks the parents in their conference if they’ve considered that their gender nonconforming kid might be trans. Or teachers who encourage kids to hide things from “nonsupportive” parents. Or teachers who change name and gender of students, etc.
It’s a huge mind-game to send kids down this road, but I’m convinced the adults who do it don’t see the harm.
And in fact many well-meaning people see therapy to decrease emotional distress as “conversion therapy” and then they mix it up with the horrible (real) conversion therapy some have tried to do with gay and lesbian kids.
The difference is: every society, every time and place, has had its gay and lesbian people, and they can’t change sexual orientation even if they want to.
But not every society, not every time and place, had permanent medicalization and cosmetic surgeries that damaged kids’ fertility and sexual response and called that “being who they are.” This was never considered a necessity before.
Be who you are, certainly, without denying your body is real and exists and is perfectly fine as it is.
Yes, I agree that it comes from the top - what I label the education establishment, and probably even further up the political chain.
And yes, it does seem to be an effort to remake reality to conform to some preferred ideology, as crazy as that sounds. Trying to teach children (all children) to deny reality is incredibly damaging.
State sanctioned child abuse. Claiming good intentions does not make it acceptable.
I agree with you. I do think it’s harder to put a stop to, when people seem to truly believe they’re on the side of the angels and helping children. They will go to great lengths, I believe, to avoid consciously realizing that they’ve harmed children, because that would devastate them. Much easier emotionally for them to double down and continue to “believe”—which makes our job (to end it) much more difficult.
How would you like to be a parent, for example, who realized you’d played a role in destroying your child’s brain and bone development, fertility, sexual function, mental health, and ability to date, form intimate bonds with another person, and someday create their own family?
You would go to great, great lengths not to let that realization seep into your consciousness.
Voltaire:
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Against children. Their own children.
It’s definitely coming from the folks who train teachers in universities, too. My sense is that recent cohorts of graduate students have nudged the teacher education curriculum further in this direction. I teach in an area that you’d expect to be doctrinaire on this stuff, and plenty of my colleagues throughout the humanities are indeed dogmatic where gender identity is concerned. But the school of education people take the cake.
What about the parents who refuse to believe their kids are a different gender and ignore it all -- but schools and friends treat the child as if they are different sex? There is so much cognitive dissonance, not only for the parents, but for the child.
Yes, I think it’s really harmful for the kid. Their beliefs about their gender are being validated by media, by their friends, by their teachers, by the curriculum— and there are their dumb old mean ignorant parents, refusing to get with the program.
It’s a problem. The extent to which society undermines parents in this way is really terrible.
I’ve never heard of a school, say, where they have a conversation with the parent and then come to an understanding that “we should respect what the parent’s judgment call is here.” No it’s always in opposition to the bad unenlightened parent, and feeling sorry for the kid, and then doubling down.
Thanks for this article. Many parents are not following this current trend of encouraging the wish of transition of their kids. But they feel alone. New groups of parents emerge everywhere in the world (GENSPECT, AManda Familias, AMQG, Bayswater support group, Ypomoni, Genid Sweden, PDEQ-Quebec, ... ) But who knows about us ? Which journalist speaks about that in the mainstream medias ?
I think this experience is made infinitely harder for parents when society either ignores them or paints them as bad parents or bigots.
It’s also much harder for families because, no matter what parents say to their kids about “being trans,” all of society is providing opposite messages. If their children had a different condition, such as an eating disorder, their schools and coaches and peers wouldn’t be telling them how great that is, and we all need to celebrate it, and your parents are wrong and possibly even bad people.
Parents have been threatened with losing custody of their kids because they didn’t agree to transition.
Abigail Shrier is the only journalist I can think of who’s regularly written about this. I first saw her writing in the Wall Street Journal of all places, about the phenomenon of teen girls deciding they are “really” the opposite sex. In her book she talks about the parents she’s met, and how they all love their kids and how none of them she met are bigots. But it’s very hard to oppose a cultural narrative.
Thanks for this answer. Precisely, I often compare gender dysphoria with eating disorder . In one case, school and doctors are with you. In the other case, you become paranoiac, you never know who is willing to help.
Yes, and usually, no one is willing to help. :/ Except to "help" undermine you and "help" your child overcome the limits you want to set.
https://pitt.substack.com/
You're a one-man Substack encyclopedia.
Sorry, one-person-with-testes Substack encyclopedia.
Yes. This is the presentation of the case which, if it were read by everyone tonight, would end the practice of social transition tomorrow. Your reason and clarity have triumphed again! Thank you.
Thank you for the kind words, Jen. If only we could magically speed up the process so fewer kids were harmed.
When I was ten or eleven my friends and I rode our bikes a few miles to a small airport. We gave a pilot (a stranger) a couple of bucks for gas and he gave us a ride in his Piper Cub over our homes. Returning home we told our parents who had no idea of our plans and they thought nothing about it. Early fifties. Imagine that happening today.
1) That is an incredibly cool story and I’ll bet an amazing memory. 2) if I imagine it happening today, I expect a call to the police would be involved, except the kids would never be out of sight that long in the first place, to execute such a maneuver, and if the kids saw a stranger, they would be certain the guy was going to kill and kidnap them (not necessarily in that order) and would in no way request a ride anywhere. They would have heard the admonition against “being taken to a second location”— it’s certain death!!!
I love it. And I am sad for today’s kids. And if my own kids did that, even I —despite being on the “let them have autonomy and fun” end of the parenting spectrum —would have a flippin’ heart attack.
I know everyone is probably bored with my memories of childhood independence from the fifties but one more has surfaced that I wanted to share with you. While visiting downtown Chicago (sans parents) we would stand outside one of the two burlesque houses on State street south of Van Buren and sneak peeks of the show when the door opened briefly. Taking pity on these preteen young men the guy at the door once let us in to watch the whole show. This we never mentioned to our folks.
I am not bored at all of your reminiscences: it sounds like you and your friends were very enterprising, and this trait has probably stood you in good stead!
This is an old thread, but I've only recently discovered this page. These stories are awesome. No boredom, but definitely a tinge of jealousy!
Your wonderful story is reminding me of a story from a friend of mine that is almost the opposite of yours but is very funny. My friend had an extremely overprotective mother, who allowed him to ride his bike only in their little cul-de-sac until he was 12 years old (!).
On the day my friend turned 12, he called up his best friend, and they set out on an EPIC bike ride that took them halfway across Massachusetts. When they turned around to go back, they realized that they were exhausted and couldn’t move. The whole way out they had been riding downhill and with the wind, and they had no energy left for the return trip. They had to call my friend’s mom to drive across the state to pick them up. I always thought it kind of served her right for being so ridiculously overprotective.
I waited until I was an adult to ride my bike across my state (Illinois) but again as pre teens my friends and I would ride the commuter train twenty miles to downtown Chicago (unaccompanied by adults) and spend the day roaming the Loop (Marshall Fields and Carsons), maybe a movie, Grant Park and the lakefront. When we got home my mom’s reaction was “That’s nice. Get ready for dinner.”
Another superb analysis, Salonniere. I would urge anyone who's not listened to the episode of Gender: A Wider Lens podcast on this topic to check it out. Truly, social transition is a powerful intervention that sets children on a collision course with their own bodies.
I especially appreciate your discussion of how a major health website dismisses Kohlberg with no evidence and no argumentation whatsoever! It is so typical of the (un)reasoning we see again and again in major institutions and powerful media. Fudge things that were considered reasonably settled by the natural and social sciences until it's just a big blob of melted goo, and imagine that this blobbiness will somehow benefit trans people.
But the most visible result is that kids are transitioning at exponentially-increasing rates (socially and medically), while the actual problems that beset transitioned people (in housing, employment, and above all mental health) remain largely unaddressed. The loudest voices are in fact relatively privileged and focused on their own validation. They prefer celebrating sex work (for instance) over creating other employment opportunities for low-skilled, poor trans women. In this quest for validation, the losers are not "the cis"; they're the most vulnerable transitioned adults - and legions of children and youth.
Thanks— I will have to check out that episode. It’s a great podcast.
Read this tonight because it was in GC News Review. 8 months later, still a brilliant and helpful piece. Thank you for your clarity and deep insights!
Thank you so much Elizabeth! I appreciate the kind feedback.
I'm not going to post this as yet another comment in the endlessly-nested comments under Klaus' remarks about identity, but it's inspired by his response. One great irony in the presently dominant understanding of gender is that sociologists and other feminist scholars have regarded gender as something one "does" rather than something one "is" since the late 1980s. Among these scholars? Judith Butler. That's pretty much the whole premise of Gender Trouble. Butler argues strenuously against the idea that there's some internal essence in ourselves that constitutes gender. Rather, gender is discursively created all the way down.
I disagree with the latter point when it comes to sex. Yes, the way we think about sex is shaped profoundly by societal norms and ideas. But reproductive sex would still be a binary thing (just two gametes) regardless of how we conceptualize everything related to it.
Butler does quite a nimble dance around the notion of an internal gender identity, these days. I have yet to see Butler endorse this idea openly - and indeed the New Statesman interview from a year ago revealed that Butler has declared a nonbinary legal identity in the state of CA but still doesn't think pronouns are anyone's personal property, tho Butler enjoys being referred to as they/them.
Identity politics originally referred to politics that take into account one's location in broader systems of power. It didn't refer to a deeply-felt sense of oneself. It's been warped into an exercise in navel-gazing, and the resultant rumination is proving unhealthy for many of our young people.
Yes one of the most annoying things is the conflation of sex and gender.
Sex is real and exists in the physical world and matters for women’s reality.
Gender is a bunch of ideas. Anyone who wants to hold ideas about gender is welcome to do it, and there’s a lot that could be discussed, but it doesn’t change the fact that sex exists in the material world.
As some feminists say (and I agree)—everyone knows who’s female when it comes time to choose which fetuses to abort; which infants to leave out in the field to die of exposure; which children to genitally mutilate to ensure their chastity; which children to sell into slavery, if you have to choose one to sell; which children not to educate, if there’s not enough money to educate all; and which children to marry off for their reproductive capacity in exchange for some goats.
Everyone knows what sex is. It matters what sex is. In many cultures, women are still treated like property or livestock. Everyone knows which people are treated like property or livestock, and which are not. This is never in doubt. They have no trouble telling who’s who.
It’s only in our culture, where women have a lot of freedom and opportunity and are treated relatively well (not _as_ well, not with _as_ much respect, but still: relatively well) that we invent all this nonsense about people changing sex. It’s so aggravatingly narrow-minded and foolish— not to mention blind to the reality of societies that aren’t as wealthy as ours.
Whilst looking up Covid stats I see the CDC list numbers of pregnant people.
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/
Ah yes, "pregnant people" -- soon to be "birthing people" -- formerly known as "women."
Then I imagine Bridget Phetasy and her sidekicks screaming in the background: "WOMEN!"
Margaret Atwood predicted it all
She did. Although, strangely, Margaret Atwood had also bought into modern gender ideology and the whole “trans women are women” thing.
I've posted other comments on this article, and I find myself still mulling it over a few days later. I think that's a good thing - an article that keeps you thinking.
I agree quite strongly that parents following the "social transition" mode for their children is a terrible idea. But I can't accept "societal pressure" as an understandable explanation.
We hear a lot now about how "finally, the adults are in the room" and back in control. Well then, act like it! Growing up, we all heard some version of "if everybody else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?" from our parents, to show the limits of peer pressure. Now it seems we have parents willing to jump off that bridge, while the others line the road and cheer them on.
Grow up! If parents can't stand up to peer pressure in order to protect their own children, is there any line they wouldn't cross if the peer pressure were sufficient? It's a chilling thought. How much damage will they tolerate in order to stay in the good graces of the woke zealots?
I do think it’s that people are on autopilot. If everyone “on their team” is doing something, they will too. If everyone is doing something, they assume it’s good. Very few people are analytical.
Very true - and in era of information tsunami, when analysis is more important than ever.
A coherent, well written take on what is happening to our society as a result of pro trans activists starting to get a hold on our institutions such as schools and the medical profession. It is a wake up call to parents and others who care about that our youth is being indoctrinated by a fanatical group who will stop at nothing to shove their agenda down our throats. This spiteful, vicious group has attacked well loved people like JK Rowling, who has a commitment to truth first of all and calls them out for what they truly are and believe. They are holding up a bill against female genital mutilation for their own petty reasons, a bill that would benefit millions of women worldwide, all because of bickering over the usage of the words female and genital, which they feel excludes trans women. What could be more ridiculous, trans women don't have to fear FGM because they have no female genitals to mutilate! These same fanatical trans activists have attacked women's marches around the world because they hate feminists. Mermaids, a trans advocacy organization, had a high corporate officer who is a sex offender. They also push their agenda on vulnerable children, giving them breast binders behind their parent's backs. The list goes on... For how long will society go on before it gets sick of these fanatics foisting their disgusting so called values on us? Time to just say no to pronouns, calling men in dresses 'girls', misogynist trans activists, biological men in women's sports/bathrooms/lockerrooms and their whole, sick agenda!
A coherent, well written take on what is happening to our society as a result of pro trans activists starting to get a hold on our institutions such as schools and the medical profession. It is a wake up call to parents and others who care about that our youth is being indoctrinated by a fanatical group who will stop at nothing to shove their agenda down our throats. This spiteful, vicious group has attacked well loved people like JK Rowling, who has a commitment to truth first of all and calls them out for what they truly are and believe. They are holding up a bill against female genital mutilation for their own petty reasons, a bill that would benefit millions of women worldwide, all because of bickering over the usage of the words female and genital, which they feel excludes trans women. What could be more ridiculous, trans women don't have to fear FGM because they have no female genitals to mutilate! These same fanatical trans activists have attacked women's marches around the world because they hate feminists. Mermaids, a trans advocacy organization, had a high corporate officer who is a sex offender. They also push their agenda on vulnerable children, giving them breast binders behind their parent's backs. The list goes on... For how long will society go on before it gets sick of these fanatics foisting their disgusting so called values on us? Time to just say no to pronouns, calling men in dresses 'girls', misogynist trans activists, biological men in women's sports/bathrooms/lockerrooms and their whole, sick agenda!
A coherent, well written take on what is happening to our society as a result of pro trans activists starting to get a hold on our institutions such as schools and the medical profession. It is a wake up call to parents and others who care about that our youth is being indoctrinated by a fanatical group who will stop at nothing to shove their agenda down our throats. This spiteful, vicious group has attacked well loved people like JK Rowling, who has a commitment to truth first of all and calls them out for what they truly are and believe. They are holding up a bill against female genital mutilation for their own petty reasons, a bill that would benefit millions of women worldwide, all because of bickering over the usage of the words female and genital, which they feel excludes trans women. What could be more ridiculous, trans women don't have to fear FGM because they have no female genitals to mutilate! These same fanatical trans activists have attacked women's marches around the world because they hate feminists. Mermaids, a trans advocacy organization, had a high corporate officer who is a sex offender. They also push their agenda on vulnerable children, giving them breast binders behind their parent's backs. The list goes on... For how long will society go on before it gets sick of these fanatics foisting their disgusting so called values on us? Time to just say no to pronouns, calling men in dresses 'girls', misogynist trans activists, biological men in women's sports/bathrooms/lockerrooms and their whole, sick agenda!